Halloween decorations

Jonathan Quilter | DispatchTrick-or-treaters will miss it, but their parents might catch a sly reference to the television show The Walking Dead at Brian and Janae Mulvaine’s Marysville house. “One of the guys on the show had these zombie heads in an aquarium,” said Brian, explaining the three severed heads that greet visitors from a glass tank at the base of the Mulvaines’ front steps.Request to buy this photo

Jonathan Quilter | DispatchYounger kids too scared to advance can dip into a treat bucket at the bottom of the steps. But those who brave the steps and the moving robotic zombies and body parts on the deck are rewarded with full-size candy bars.Request to buy this photo

Jonathan Quilter | DispatchThe Mulvaines, who are big fans of the horror film director George Romero, have no plans to ratchet back the fright. Brian’s goal: to have visitors call 911 in horror because the scene is so lifelike.Request to buy this photo

Jonathan Quilter | DispatchIn front of Shannon and Jeff Shope’s home in Blacklick are a zombie pirate, zombie bride and zombie Elvis. Then there’s the dead man in a coffin on the door and a corpse wrapped in a spider’s web hanging from the porch. On Halloween night, those corpses are joined by half a dozen or so live zombies that turn the Shopes’ yard into Night of the Living Dead.Request to buy this photo

Jonathan Quilter | DispatchAs neighbor kids get older, they get braver about running such a ghoulish gauntlet. “They tell me, ‘This year, I’m going to make it all the way to the front door,’” Shannon said.Request to buy this photo

Jonathan Quilter | DispatchAs for the others, Shannon hand delivers the goodies. “If I see a small kid who crossed the street to avoid our house, I’ll run a treat bag over to them,” she said.Request to buy this photo

Jim Weiker | DispatchRandy Bowman’s border collie, Gary, knows when it’s Halloween season. That’s when strangers stop in front of his Westgate house to stare. “My dog is in a heightened state of alert,” Bowman said. “He’ll sit at the front window and think, ‘Oh, here comes another visitor.’”Request to buy this photo

Jim Weiker | DispatchAmong the tombstones, skeletons, spiders and witches, visitors have plenty to take in.Request to buy this photo

Jim Weiker | DispatchNew this year is a 7-foot-high pumpkin-head scarecrow modeled off a figure in the 1999 film Sleepy Hollow. “It was the opening scene of the film; the camera pans up to a mansion with that scarecrow,” Bowman said. “I carved that fake pumpkin as close as I could to that one.”Request to buy this photo

Jim Weiker | DispatchHe has been decorating the home since he and his partner, John, moved in a decade ago.Request to buy this photo

Jim Weiker | Dispatch“It’s just fun, a fun holiday, and makes me feel like a kid,” Bowman said. “It’s always been one of my favorite holidays.”Request to buy this photo

Chris Russell | DispatchThe outside of Bianca and Ray Baumgartner’s house is scary enough, but the real action is inside the house and garage. “This year, we built a prison door for a zombie in the garage,” Bianca said. “We also have an electric chair with someone getting electrocuted, a guillotine and a bunch of other stuff.”Request to buy this photo

Chris Russell | DispatchBeth Starrett has long been a Halloween fan, and she has 65 miniature Halloween villages in her home to prove it. She and her husband, Joe, started adding the same spooky touch to the outside of their Dublin home as soon as they moved in a dozen years ago. The collection has grown to include a half-dozen tombstones, a zoo’s worth of animal skeletons, witches dangling from a tree and an occupied coffin.Request to buy this photo

Chris Russell | DispatchRegular skeletons — even one hanging from a noose — aren’t quite enough for Glen LaFortune, so this year he melted some “flesh” onto a scarecrow skeleton, giving it a zombie look. “Every year I try to introduce something new. This year was the scarecrow,” he said. “I’m going to take that look and give the other skeletons a similar corpse look next year. We like the whole zombie thing.”Request to buy this photo

Chris Russell | DispatchTracy and Kelly Thomas have decorated their home for Halloween each of the past 14 years — except one. “There was one year we didn’t do it because we went on vacation, and we never heard the end of it,” Kelly said. “Our neighborhood definitely expects it. We’ve had neighbors tell us the house helps them get their kids to eat dinner. They say, ‘If you finish your dinner, we can walk by the Halloween house.”Request to buy this photo

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